WNYC News

April is National Poetry Month. This past week on WNYC Morning Edition, we've asked for your poems on the theme of "history" inspired by historical happenings, real or imagined.  

Amy Penwell is a school library media specialist at Riverton School in New Jersey. Her third grade students recently participated in an online poetry workshop with Kate Messner, author of the popular "Ranger in Time" kids books and "History Smashers" graphic novel series. Penwell joined WNYC host Michael Hill to share how getting kids into poetry doesn't have to be an impossible task.

Below is a poem submitted to Penwell by third grader, June Donnelly, and another from listener Michele Herman of Manhattan.

The Mountains of Zion

by June Donnelly 

The chocolatey muffin starts the day

The Rocky Mountains of Zion

Drippy slippery, tick spray slipping down my leg.

A high fall from the mountain, never to happen.

Clickety! Clack! the horses go

Buttery and creamy chocolate muffin

Muddy trail from the rain outside the air smells like the cold winter

Hot burning sun that the wind cools down

Independence Day

By Michele Herman

After hot dogs

and fireworks

to celebrate

being free,

every year

I turn on the TV.

I’m a sucker

for “1776” –

I say I’m going to bed,

hand on the remote,

and then see it through

to the final vote.

I always side

with Adams

and Franklin,

of course,

and that goofball Lee

on his horse,

the bad guys

being fops in pastels,

male Southern belles

desperate to preserve

a way of life

they don’t deserve.

and I look down

at myself, always

cotton clad,

and remember

that someone

far away

is being had

to make my clothes

from a cotton mill,

which is why

I began to buy

from Goodwill.

It's the Politics Brief from WNYC. This week, Elizabeth Kim and Jon Campbell break down the latest out of New York City and Albany -- as rapid changes to tariff rates make economic outlooks unpredictable, and the federal government pulls more funding from the city.

New York City officials are trying out a novel way to move longtime residents of homeless shelters into new permanent housing — by guaranteeing most of their rent.

The New York region is in the midst of a historic housing crisis. Now, a new report says the region’s housing shortage could be made even worse due to the potential loss of up to 80-thousand homes over the next 15 years due to flooding. The study is called “Averting Crisis: Zoning to Create Resilient Homes for All,” and it comes from the Regional Plan Association advocacy group. 

RPA's Vice President of Housing and Neighborhood Planning Moses Gates and Vice President of Energy and Environment Programs Robert Freudenberg are two of the report's co-authors. They spoke with WNYC's Stephen Nessen about their findings.

LIU-Brooklyn told scholarship students at its new Roc Nation School they could graduate "without debt." But now, many say they're struggling to pay thousands of dollars in unexpected fees. 

In one of the oldest railroad stories, folk legend John Henry races against a machine hammering holes for the construction of a railroad tunnel, only to die from exhaustion after just barely beating the machine. In the modern version of this tale, Google’s artificial intelligence algorithm could go up against the experienced ear of an MTA track maintainer.

“ I was a skeptic to say the least,” Rob Sarno, a third-generation transit worker and  assistant chief track officer for system maintenance, told Gothamist.

But last September, Sarno agreed to work with Google to install six of its Pixel smartphones on an A train. They attached some of the devices on the car's axle. They put one phone on the train's bonnet, which older A train models have. The phones were set up to record hours of sounds and vibrations.

Then the MTA sent Google hours of training audio of what track defects sound like, so it could feed its AI algorithm to detect defects based on the sounds or vibrations.

The MTA has well-trained inspectors that do this job by regularly walking all 865 miles of track including train yards, looking for problems. Sarno argues that’s the best way to spot an issue.

Video and DVD stores are a thing of the past. Nearly all of them went out of businesses after the rise of Netflix and other streaming services. 

But two people are trying to bring the retro business model back to New York City. They’re opening a store in Williamsburg called Night Owl Video next Friday that will be selling everything from VHS to 4k UHD titles.

Jess Mills and Aaron Hamel are the owners of Night Owl Video and they talked with WNYC's Sean Carlson more about why physical media is important to them.

April is National Poetry Month and as always, WNYC's Morning Edition marked the occasion by playing listeners' poems on the air. This year the theme was literary, and changed weekly, from "memoir" to "history" to "science-fiction and fantasy" to "mystery."

Click here to read through and listen to all the poems we had on our air, as well as a few others that were submitted. Be patient, it sometimes takes a minute for the audio player to load. 

Listeners sent us hundreds of poems, and we are so very grateful. To everyone who send in poem — thank you so much!

New York City's subway system has a new map. On this week's On The Way roundup of transit news, the team gives a rundown of interesting details in the new design. 

New York’s City Council says the city has more money to spend next year than the amount Mayor Adams laid out in his 2026 executive budget proposal. Council leadership is offering up a $117-billion dollar proposal of their own for the city’s next fiscal year, which starts in July.

Justin Brannan is the chair of the city councils budget committee. He also represents southwest Brooklyn, including Bay Ridge and Coney Island. He talked with WNYC's Sean Carlson more about the council's budget proposal.